PORTRAIT. Hassan, crack smoker in Paris: "This drug is a violent trap"

By Simon Louvet Published on Paris news See my news

“He smokes because of his father,” breathes Hassan as he sees a child barely 14 years old pass on the sidewalk of rue Riquet in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. If Hassan knows about it, it's because he goes to the drug camp “every day”, to get crack and use his drugs, a “trap” in which he has fallen.

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“The first time, you feel like a bull seeing the bullfighter”

Like the residents flabbergasted by the child who claims to smoke "like everyone else", Hassan says he is "shocked". Tuesday September 21, 2021, like the day before and the next day, he made the journey from Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), to get his pebble. “The first time in my life was five or six years ago,” tries to situate the 54-year-old man.

PSG hat on his head, amateur goalkeeper's jersey and tennis player's backpack on his shoulders, he stopped about ten meters from the drug addicts' camp, where smokers crack their lighters under the eyes of the "modous", the dealers who hold under their control the 200 consumers who are ready to do anything to get their fix, from theft to prostitution.

Why it's violent and addictive

A long list that begins, for everyone, with a first destructive experience that Hassan wants to recount: "When you smoke the first time, you feel like the bull when he sees the bullfighter, it takes you away, it gives you adrenaline incredible. Me, I felt stronger than everyone. An “explosion” that you only experience once.

This “bang” that resounds in the brain of first-time inhalers is caused by the transformation of cocaine, “based” to give the pebble of crack. This mixture of "purified" cocaine with ammonia "doubles the effects in intensity and speed of action", making "the descent faster" while "reinforcing the addiction very quickly, with a physical and psychic impact", explained to actu Paris the addictologist psychiatrist Mario Blaise.

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Drug addicts under the violent control of drug dealers

An “explosion” that consumers of the encysted open scenes in the north-east of Paris only experience once. For two reasons. Firstly because smokers "consume again to relive the first effect, which never comes back", explained Mario Blaise. And above all because “the first pebble is always purer”, according to Stalincrack, a local resident under pseudonym mobilized to warn about the living conditions of local residents and drug addicts.

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A "commercial" technique that works, reinforced by the violence of the blows to bad payers and those who complain about the quality of the product, "pure shit" according to Hassan, who never felt like a bull again . But he continued to smoke, to forget what he calls "difficulties", to beg or offer "helping hands" to allow himself to come back every day, to smoke a stone or two while trying “to stay away from the dealers to avoid the most problems”.

Behind him these dealers, recognizable by their new clothes and their “beautiful faces” compared to those of their customers, rule the 100 meters where the most disaffiliated consumers, the most destroyed by crack, are concentrated.

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“Everyone has suffered here”

At 54, Hassan is over 60. An effect of old age reinforced by his clogged chin, a frequent consequence of the consumption of crack which ravages the body, until teeth fall out. Before meeting Hassan, “Nobody”* told us, after inhaling the contents of his pipe, “the broken destinies” of the drug addicts present in Éole.

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Like Nobody*, if Hassan continues to smoke in Éole, it is primarily because it is easy to get the pancakes there, which sell for between five and ten euros. A lower rate than that applied in Stalingrad, 500 meters away, for other customers. “Those who dress well” – neither thieves, nor prostitutes, nor raped in order to be able to pay – and come by car to provide ten or fifteen euros a stone. "The drug addicts of Éole are the visible part of this problem, people in suits and sores also shoot themselves", notes Corinne, a local resident who witnessed these scenes. If Hassan comes to Éole, it's also to avoid taking out his crack pipe in his neighborhood, “ashamed of being seen stoned by the neighbors”.

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"I released a lot of people from crack, I was an example"

A fear that he no longer has towards his Moroccan parents, "who rebuilt France by working for Bouygues for 45 years" but above all "who know", he says, lowering his head for the only time in the discussion. The rest of the time, he tries to look his interlocutor in the eyes. Especially when he says "having taken people out of crack".

Stalincrack, who knows Hassan and nicknames him "uncle", confirms his commitment to help drug addicts. He is one of the "elders", those who knew the hill of crack, a high place of crack whose evacuation without solution in November 2019 is at the origin of the health, social and security crisis which strikes the northeast. for two years.

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These "old" smokers are, after the all-powerful modous, the figures of Aeolus. Like Myrlène, who explained to Anne Hidalgo that “consumption rooms are not the solution, there are even little girls in the camp”. "It's not easy to live what we live", she also confided after having swept the waste which strewn the camp installed between the gate of the gardens and the cycle path of the Riquet bridge. "We want to be stable and neat," insisted Myrlène despite the crush.

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VIDEO. Exchange between Anne Hidalgo and Myrlène (from 7:19): Images by journalist Clément Lanot for CL Press.

“Impossible in a room”

When he assures us that he "wants to get out of it and quit crack the hard way, like the rest", Hassan abandons us, promising to come back. Fist clenched, he turns from rue Riquet to rue d'Aubervilliers. He keeps his promise and reappears about thirty minutes later. “I ate well,” he mutters. The discussion resumes, but Hassan will not be able to say what he thinks of a consumption room. He just reminds that the consumer buys to smoke immediately, "impossible in a room".

The rest of the speech is blurred, his remarks become incoherent, he says "to have educated Booba at the Pont de Sèvres" and "to know a lot of PSG players". He, the "big fish" whose life becomes "a movie", shows a large scar on his leg and recounts "his comas", says he was drugged "on GHB by a drug addict" who "stole his crack and his parts", assures that he will file a complaint "against the police and the RATP" when he has recovered his accommodation.

Impossible now to dissociate the true from the false, difficult to give credit to his book project. Hassan's glassy, ​​empty eyes left no doubt about the ingredients for his meal: a lighter, a pipe and a pebble of crack he held in his clenched fist.

* Nobody requested anonymity to testify.

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